


mixtapes, vol 1

by sidnihoudini



Category: Fall Out Boy
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-21
Updated: 2013-02-21
Packaged: 2017-11-30 00:59:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,791
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/693544
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sidnihoudini/pseuds/sidnihoudini
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This CD feels important.  Like, in a few years it will totally be a relic of their relationship.  A very important piece of history, in what Pete hopes will be the never-ending story of he and Patrick.</p>
            </blockquote>





	mixtapes, vol 1

**Author's Note:**

> Seven short, almost-related snapshots. Largely unedited and inspired by the song-titles at the beginning of each section.

_I. cupids chokehold_

Pete laughs and leans forward, grabbing another handful of popcorn from the plastic bowl set on the bus table.

Travis and Patrick are sitting across from him, Patrick's teeth gleaming as he grins in front of his computer, Travis red-eye blazed from the five minute break he took not 10 minutes ago.

"Is this song secretly about me?" Pete asks, glancing down over the lyrics sheet, and completely ignoring the KATY scribbled in the margins. "Because I don't mind if it is -- and you know that I can keep a secret."

This makes Travis laugh hard. Patrick just rolls his eyes, even though the smile is still lingering on his face.

Everything about this song reads like a love letter to everything that Pete knows he and Patrick are.

Pete pops the handful of popcorn into his mouth and chews loudly, haphazardly checking his sidekick with his other hand.

Behind them, Joe wonders past, en-route from the toilet to his bunk. 

"This is about the time I called you while I was on the toilet, isn't it?" Pete asks, still crunching. The sidekick goes back into his pocket, and his feet go up onto the table.

Travis laughs and claps haphazardly, falling backwards into the couch.

*

_II. all too well_

Patrick walks up the painted front steps carefully, with an empty cardboard box swinging loosely from one hand.

It's overcast, outside, moderately dark and wet. The roads are even grey with nothingness in the twilight of the night. Patrick notices a light on inside, on the second floor. It's the room that they used mostly for storage and music stuff, but had more recently been housing Pete's bed and belongings over the last few weeks.

He doesn't have to use his keys -- the door is already unlocked -- he just opens the screen door first, and then the heavy wooden inside door as he steps forward.

The warmth of the inside of the house hits Patrick in the face, and it smells so immediately, intricately like home that Patrick could fall to his knees and start to sob right here.

But that would be far too dramatic for this.

This -- is nothing. This is cleaning up the last dregs of an implosion that had been happening in fractions for the last two years. These last few days are nothing but paperwork, and Patrick has been through much more that could have ended in tears, but never did.

All this is, is an empty box that will soon be filled with the few remaining belongings that Patrick will carry out of this house. His house. His ex-house. Can you divorce a house?

Patrick steps in and comes around the corner of the hallway, spots Pete sitting on the counter top in the kitchen almost immediately.

He's this new version of Pete, the one who isn't so silly anymore, and is darker despite the fact that things are better, now. This new Pete is different and scary and weird, and Patrick can hardly look him in the eye anymore.

Pete ignores him in favour of his iPhone. It's for the best, anyways, cause these days they don't talk too much less Pete is in a particularly spicy mood. 

Patrick has had more damage inflicted on him in the last few weeks than he ever has before in his life -- by anyone, much less his ex-best friend and fiance.

*

_III. someone must get hurt_

There had been Patrick, Jeanae and Ashlee, and he had also found out about Michelle and Lindsay afterwards. 

Patrick also doesn't include the multitude of guys that Pete had only fooled around with, because he didn't feel comfortable counting a head if there wasn't a name to go along with it. Of course, if Pete had also felt that way, things would have generally ended up differently.

"I love you the most," Pete told him one night, when they had been arguing about the past again, and Patrick had finally resigned himself to the fact that Pete would never be anything more than that.

Patrick's eyebrows shot up into his hairline -- the first tell that he was getting the overwhelming urge to strangle Pete. Fit of passion.

"It doesn't matter who you love the most," Patrick said, stepping into Pete's space. "You're too busy fucking your way through Los Angeles -- like what is your problem? I know you don't like yourself, but don't take that out on me. I love you more than I think you realize, sometimes."

Pete looked momentarily winded, as he rubbed the sleep out of the corner of his eye. It had been raining outside, that day, and you could hear the wet thundering against the side of the wall.

"I'm sorry," Pete said, quietly. Considering everyone who had been involved, the only person he was considering in that moment was Patrick. "I don't know how to stop. I don't want to do it, but I don't know how to stop."

Patrick made a disgusted face, and turned towards the kitchen table to get what he came for -- the last dregs of belongings that had been kicking around Pete's LA home.

"That's okay," He'd said, hoisting the bag.

*

_IV. I thought I saw your face today_

Patrick's stomach drops into his toes every time he thinks he sees Pete.

It's never Pete, and some boys don't even look like Pete, but all it takes is one glimpse of jaw or hair or chest, and Patrick is falling into the ground, trembling through his coffee or his walk or his errand as his nerves calm down, as his brain tells the rest of his body that it wasn't Pete, it may never actually be Pete again. 

Pete is on a separate coast, and he and Patrick are decidedly -- definitively -- done.

If he ever does actually run into Pete, he's almost certain that all he'll be good for is spilling his coffee all over himself, noodling through the conversation, and potentially sweating a bit. Patrick can't help it.

He still loves Pete to death, and if Pete weren't such a fuck-up, he figures they'd be living in holy matrimony right now, or at least having sex on the regular. But it isn't bittersweet or sad or anything else, it's just them. He and Pete, and their life (no longer) together.

Some nights he wonders, idly, if Pete ever writes lyrics about him.

(Everyone peripherally involved in the break-up knows that he does.)

*

_V. city lights_

Some nights are bad for Pete.

The west coast and the east coast are closer than peanut butter and jelly in his heart, but that doesn't mean shit when there are dozens of states between the two, and Patrick is across the country because of it.

Despite his best intentions, Pete slowly comes to feeling trapped by Los Angeles.

Patrick finds release and freedom back in Chicago after too many years of faking it in Cali, but Pete can't just jump ship and abandon post (named Bronx and Ashlee, respectively) and they both know it.

Ashlee hates the east coast unless it's New York, and Pete knows that no matter how much he sweet talks or throws in the direction of her bank account, it isn't something that she would consider. Especially considering that she wasn't a stupid girl, and would indefinitely come to realize that the reason for his hot-footed move would be to be closer to Patrick.

So some nights end up being bad, like tonight, while he sits above the city in the hotel room he's living in while he and Ashlee split their possessions, and move into two separate residences. 

He misses Patrick like he feels like he might miss air if his lungs ever stopped working, and he isn't sure if it hurts more or less when he calls, and finds out that Patrick is feeling just fine.

No change, here, he says.

*

_VI. the sweater song_

Pete loves Patrick like a lot of things, but he doesn't love him less than anything or anyone else until Bronx comes along.

It's an incredibly delicate situation -- the balance that he, Patrick and Ashlee strike -- but Patrick does it for Pete, and Ashlee just wants whats best for Bronx. Pete understands that growing up with an obsessive, potentially closeted man for a father was a major point of contention in Ashlee's life, and he doesn't want to be the cause of her damnation to repeat the failed past.

...despite the fact that it turns out he is, in fact, an obsessive, moderately closeted man who also became a major point of contention in Ashlee's life.

The thing more important to Pete's person is that Bronx loves Patrick. Looks at him with these starry little kid eyes that make Pete want to fall to his knees on the ground, and worship the ground that Patrick walks on.

Patrick, for all intents and purposes, is just as awkward around children as he is adults -- but somehow, watching him talk to kids is funnier.

He just doesn't realize that Bronx isn't an adult, and, after overhearing a few conversations, Pete comes to the realization that Bronx doesn't realize he isn't, either.

Patrick teaches him how to play Minecraft on its peaceful setting, and takes him for walks down the driveway. He even picks him up a couple of times, when Bronx gets tired and lonely.

One day, Pete is sitting on the living room couch when he witnesses Bronx going to Patrick for the first time, instead of him.

He doesn't tell Ashlee about that one. He may be the ex-closeted point of contention, but he doesn't want Patrick to go down with the sunken ship by association.

*

_VII. i'm a donkey for your love_

Pete scrawls Patrick's name in black sharpie on the front of the CD case, and then adds a quick heart as an after-thought.

He thinks about his parents, and how they had told him their stories of the first vinyls and tapes they had given each other as gifts. Their 30th anniversary had been last month, which had strangely been the event that hosted the very speech that had inspired Pete to reconsider all of the feelings he had for Patrick.

Studying the CD case carefully, he turns it over, and thumbs a stray streak of ink off.

This CD feels important. Like, in a few years it will totally be a relic of their relationship. A very important piece of history, in what Pete hopes will be the never-ending story of he and Patrick.

Pete caps the sharpie, flips the CD cover again-again, and sets it on the kitchen table. Right where he knows that Patrick will see it, first thing when he comes home.


End file.
